Toronto Raptors need to start sorting out the pieces

A day removed, the Toronto Raptors were still thinking about Wednesday night. In particular, the moment Andrea Bargnani checked into the game was prominent in some minds.

Bargnani returned from a 26-game absence caused by a torn ligament in his elbow against the Celtics. When he entered the game, there were audible boos to go along with cheers. Coach Dwane Casey expressed discontent with the jeers on Wednesday, and did so again on Thursday.

“I was disappointed a little bit in the fans booing him,” Casey said. “This kid had a torn tendon. It’s not like he had a backache or a headache or a toothache. He had a torn tendon in his arm, a legit injury. I was concerned about that. He was fine. He bounced back. He used it as a chip on his shoulder, which I like. Fans can boo who they want to. This kid, he responded last night.”

Bargnani scored 13 points and grabbed three rebounds in the four-point loss.

Last Wednesday, the Raptors traded two rotation players, Jose Calderon and Ed Davis, for Rudy Gay, who happens to eat up about 40 minutes per night. On Friday night, Jonas Valanciunas returned from an 18-game absence caused by a broken finger. On Wednesday, Andrea Bargnani returned from a 26-game absence caused by torn elbow ligament.

On one hand, Casey has been glad to get all three players in the lineup. At their best, each can help the Raptors win games, and Toronto was just 5-10 in January before the trade. On the other, it causes rotational chaos: Gay needs to play heavy minutes, Valanciunas is a big part of the future and Bargnani needs to play in order to draw any trade interest. Finding minutes for all three players while keeping everybody else relatively happy can be a chore in the short-term.

And that is how you get games like Wednesday’s: Valanciunas played just two minutes; Terrence Ross, whom Casey said had earned regular minutes, played just five. Following the game, a four-point loss to Boston, fans and observers alike wondered why the franchise’s two promising rookies could barely get on the floor, much less stay on it.

“With Jonas, we went to a small lineup. Andrea came back, and that kind of knocked him out a little bit,” Casey said. “They haven’t done anything wrong. They’re still our core, our future. There’s nothing about those two that I don’t like. They make a lot of mistakes. But that’s part of growing. That’s what I told them this morning. I spoke to both of them. Again, they’ve done nothing wrong. What they’ve got to do is keep their confidence. They’re going to make a lot of mistakes. Sometimes they’ll bite you in the butt, and sometimes you can live with them. That’s part of being a rookie. That’s part of growing.”

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As the Raptors continue to lose games, though, it is becoming tougher to justify making them learn from the bench. The Raptors, at 17-32, entered Thursday evening’s play closer to last place in the Eastern Conference than to the final playoff spot. They would probably have to go 21-12 the rest of the way to entertain the notion of sniffing the eighth seed.

In his three games since returning to the floor, Valanciunas has played just 20 combined minutes. Ross has not played more than 15 minutes in a game since Gay arrived. If career journeymen Alan Anderson and Aaron Gray — who have both been useful in spots this season, particularly Anderson — were helping the Raptors win games, that would be one thing. But they are not.

Anderson played 28 minutes against the Celtics, including the entire fourth quarter. He is a solid defensive player, but is shooting just 19% from the floor over the last five games and only 36% for the season. Gray has played his best basketball recently, but he is an afterthought for the franchise in the long-term.

It comes back to those mistakes, however, in Casey’s mind. Gray directs the defence much better than Valanciunas does. Anderson, by product of his experience, knows where to be on the floor.

I spoke to both of them. Again, they’ve done nothing wrong. What they’ve got to do is keep their confidence. They’re going to make a lot of mistakes. Sometimes they’ll bite you in the butt, and sometimes you can live with them

“I thought Terrence had some significant minutes [on Sunday] against Miami,” Casey said. “He had some mistakes, rotation-wise, but hopefully he learned from it. He was in at crunch time against Miami. That was an important time to watch film with him; those were rotations he should have had.”

At some point soon, however, Casey is going to have to loosen the reins a bit more. To him, it probably feels as if he is giving the rookies a chance to make mistakes — he noted that he has never pulled either for making one specific mistake, but usually a collection of slip-ups — but keeping the fifth pick from the 2011 Draft and the eighth pick from the 2012 Draft on the bench for the vast majority of any game down the stretch would not serve to help anybody: not Ross, not Valanciunas and not Casey.

“The hardest thing to do in sports is to develop [young players],” Casey said. “I’m going to give those guys significant minutes, because the next two, three, four years, they’re going to be big parts of this organization.”

The playoffs are essentially out of reach this year. The best hope of the Raptors cracking that barrier next year is letting Valanciunas and Ross play through their mistakes even more.